Paper Siri Aanstad

A small, global adventure: mapping Norwegian beer exports in the 19th century European Business History Association - 12th Annual Conference, Bergen 2008 Siri Aanstad, PhD student, Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History University of Oslo 1. Introduction In the second half of the 19th century, Norwegian beer was sold literally all over the world: the beverage could be enjoyed everywhere from China to South Africa to Brazil. Norway thus took part in the international trade in beer in this period, together with the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and the USA. This trade has been little studied and we have few systematic and detailed accounts of the beer exports of individual countries. Exports from Norway have not received any attention at all, reflecting that the brewing sector of this country has not previously been the subject of academic study. This paper is based on an ongoing PhD project about the Norwegian brewing sector in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The main aim of the paper is to map the peak in exports that we shall see occurred between 1870 and 1890, and thus provide a basis for further analysis of this aspect of the sector’s development. The paper gives an overview of the scale and geographical scope of foreign sales in these two decades, as well as a discussion of who the main actors were, what type of products was exported and how the export business was organised. The paper draws on a number of different sources. These include official trade and industry statistics, the annual reports that the Norwegian government received from the country’s consulates in the period, and jubilee publications for individual export breweries. Unfortunately, the historical archives of individual breweries contain very little material about exports. We do however have three export books for Frydenlund Brewery, which was one of the largest Norwegian exporters. These books provide detailed information about a total of 1674 export shipments from this brewery between 1877 and 1890. The volume, destination, port of forwarding, date of dispatch from Norway, and date of arrival in the final destination of these shipments have been compiled in a data base which is used here to quantify key aspects of the Norwegian export trade. 2 2. “The golden decades”, 1870-1890 Beer exports appear in official Norwegian trade statistics from 1835. Figure 2.1.gives an overview of the annual volume that was exported from this year to 1920. Figure 2.1 Annual Norwegian beer exports, 1835-1920 3000000 2500000 2000000 1500000 Litres 1000000 500000 0 1835 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 Year Source: Tabeller vedkommende Norges Handel, 1835-1920 (trade statistics) Comment: The figure reflects a lack of data for the following years: 1836,1837, 1839, 1840, 1842, 1843, 1845, 1846, 1848, 1849, 1866, 1867, 1869, 1872, 1873, 1918 The figure clearly shows that exports on a significant scale were limited to the period between 1870 and 1890. While Norwegian beer had found its way to foreign markets as early as in the 1830s, exports were generally very small up to 1870. This year, there was a sudden increase to unprecedented high levels. Between 1868 and 1870 annual export volume almost tripled, from 377 800 to 926 960 litres, and in the following two decades exports never dropped below one million litres per year. In some years during the 1870s they even exceeded two million litres, with a peak of 2,7 million in 1878. 3 Almost equally striking as the sharp increase in 1870, is the drop in exports around 1890. Although there had been a downward trend in the 1880s, 1890 marked a clear shift to substantially lower export levels. From that year to the next, exports dropped from 1,2 to 0,8 million litres. By 1892 they had been more than halved and in the course of the next nine years dropped as low as to 128 000 litres. And even though there was a certain recovery in the period up to the First World War, exports at no point reached more than around half a million litres – and thus remained far below the levels of the 1870s and 1880s. In order to say something about the significance of these levels, we must first see them in a broader context. For example, how big were exports compared to total domestic production? And how big were they in an international context? Figure 2.2 shows annual exports as percentage share of total national production of beer. Figure 2.2 Exports as percentage share of total domestic output of beer, 1870-1890 Source: The estimates are based on annual national output figures given in Statistisk Aarbog for Kongeriget Norge for 1880 and 1917 (statistical yearbooks), and annual export figures from Tabeller vedkommende Norges Handel, 1870-1890 (trade statistics) Comment: The figure reflects a lack of export data for 1872 and 1873. 4 We see that exports never accounted for more than around seven per cent of total production. This level was reached in the early 1870s, after which the share decreased. The annual average for the whole period was 4,6 per cent. So, even when foreign sales were at their highest, they were of significantly less importance to the Norwegian brewing sector as a whole than domestic sales. As for the international context, it should be noted that we lack a comprehensive overview of the international trade in beer in the second half of the 19th century. We know that several countries took part in this trade, including the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and the USA.1 However, the lack of national export figures in the literature prevents us from establishing the relative size of the individual countries’ exports. It is however clear that the UK and Germany were by far the largest actors throughout this period, with German exports taking the lead over British in the early 1880s.2 It is also clear that Norway was a tiny player. The UK on average exported more than 76,5 million litres beer per year between 1870 and 1890.3 The Norwegian average was 1,5 million litres.4 However, it must be taken into consideration that both the UK and Germany were in a completely different league than Norway also in terms of national output. An average of 4,2 billion litres of beer were produced in the UK every year during the period,5 compared to only 35 million litres in Norway.6 As for Germany, Bavaria alone produced around 1,3 billion litres in 1886.7 It should be noted that the difference in national output levels between the UK and Norway was bigger than the difference in export levels. This is reflected in the fact that Norway was exporting a substantially higher share of total national output that the UK throughout the 1870s and 1880s. While we have seen that Norwegian exports on average accounted for 4,6 1 Gourvish, T.R. and Wilson, R.G., The British Brewing Industry 1830-1980, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Wilson, R.G. and Gourvish, T.R. (eds.), The Dynamics of the International Brewing Industry since 1800, London: Routledge and New York, 1998; Uddrag af Consulatberetninger vedkommende Norges Handel og Skibsfart, 1872-1891 (consular reports) 2 Gourvish, T.R. and Wilson, R.G., The British Brewing Industry 1830-1980, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 175 3 Gourvish, T.R. and Wilson, R.G., The British Brewing Industry 1830-1980, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 608 4 Tabeller vedkommende Norges Handel, 1870-1889 5 Gourvish, T.R. and Wilson, R.G., The British Brewing Industry 1830-1980, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 601 6 Statistisk Aarbog for Kongeriget Norge, 1880 and 1917 7 Uddrag af Consulatberetninger vedkommende Norges Handel og Skibsfart, 1886, p. 385 5 per cent of national output, the British average was only 1,6 per cent.8 Foreign markets thus played a relatively more important role for the Norwegian brewing sector than the British. There were other countries that Norway was on a more equal footing with in terms of absolute export levels. Judging from available data for Denmark, exports from the two Scandinavian neighbours were of comparable size. Danish exports were started up in the late 1860s and had by the early 1890s reached an annual average of 2,1 million litres.9 We lack national figures for the previous two decades, but it is clear that Carlsberg Brewery exported 8000 barrels – which equals 1,3 million litres – in 1885.10 Since we know that the other major Danish export brewery in the 19th century, Tuborg, only started to export on a significant scale after 1885,11 there is reason to believe that Carlsberg’s exports that year more or less equalled total national exports. To sum up: even in the two “golden decades” between 1870 and 1890, Norwegian beer exports were small compared to total domestic production. And compared to the exports of the leading countries, Germany and the UK, they were microscopical. But we have seen that these two countries were also producing beer on a far larger scale, and that Norway exported a significantly higher share of total national production than the UK. Norway was moreover exporting at similar levels as Denmark, and was thus one of two Scandinavian countries that succeeded in establishing a position for themselves as small-scale beer exporters in this period. 2. Frydenlund Brewery leads the way onto global markets Very little information exists about the markets for the earliest Norwegian beer exports, but we know that the first foreign sales were to Copenhagen and Hamburg.12 8 Gourvish, T.R.

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